Marisacat

Laugh 30 January 2012

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is bundled out of a restaurant by security service agents after it was surrounded by furious Aboriginal rights protesters in Canberra. Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott were stranded in The Lobby restaurant as dozens of demonstrators from a protest against Australia Day, which marks the arrival of British settlers in 1788, converged on the hotel… | LUKAS COCH/AFP/Getty Images

I saw the vid of this, it was hilarious. They hustled her to her limo, she lost a shoe in the process and finally they stuffed her in, butt first.

More of that please.

***

THIS I had not seen. What a scream, and so perfect.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel strokes a golden goose that was given to her by Carnival Prince Frank I and Princess Petra I of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern at the Chancellery in Berlin | ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images

LOL. Oh Yes, The Mao suit thing, clearly an influence, and I was going to note it but for the – welllll, whatever the hell that sort of pectoral , costume jewelry, brooch accessory thing she’s got goin’ on that indicates rank in some extraplanetary crime syndicate or whatever…

too funny, Condi had one of those beam me up to Galactic “SECURITY” Patrol lookin brooches too … which thought, as in Mao Mama’s case too, was most surely aided and abetted by the kooky, somewhat deranged, look in her eyes …

wish I could help honey, but I haven’t a clue who the fuck he is either, except to say he’s a pretty unpleasant lookin fuck who appears to be conspiring wit Mama Mao;…who may, or may not (dubious), have been totally bought and paid for, ….. at this point, …which is why I’ve never called myself a feminist.

on this tiny end …. it do look like Bro’s ™ Al Butterjob, Obombster, JJ, et al did absolutley nothing, as Black Americans ™ to stop that bullet ….despite any prime time boohdy hoodyz, or, Obombster’s Grits Greene solos …….. looks to me like Don, with Soooouuullllllllll Traaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiin, did far more ….. than they ever will …

China’s Middle East diplomacy is adroitly advancing three parallel tracks engaging Iran, GCC states and Israel. This may seem improbable against the backdrop of the rise of Iran and the concomitant hostility it arouses in Israel and the GCC states. But Beijing sees no contradiction here, and is striving to make the three tracks even complement each other. Conceivably, one day they well might.

Yes. Virginia Tech and Columbine. Now, let’s look at the numbers: Any given middle school, high school, or college in America can expect to have exactly one homicide on its campus every 12,000 years. So how long before the UNC-Charlotte SWAT team feels the need to justify its existence by expanding its mission? I predict they’re serving drug warrants and raiding frat houses within a year.

But, Marisa, think of all of the public money wasting measures that can be taken against the inevitable black market sugar industry!

NarcoNews – 2013
Anytown, USA

Today, the Southside Elementary School SWAT team raided the treehouse headquarters of the 3rd grade candy
cartel. Twp 8 year old ring leaders were taken into
custody and 15 pounds of illegal sugar products were
impounded.

oh very funny brinn… you are right a whole new division of the DEA and ATF. By accident I ran into a segment of talk radio with the lead doctor on… A major whack job. I landed there to catch the top of the hour news update…. and someone was screaming:

I am hanging up, You are a conservative! You don’t care about children! I won’t talk to people who disagree with me!!

It was Dr Robert Lustig who apparenty has been on a huge anti sugar, regulate, tax and ban the little children from buying a gum ball – for years.. I am serioius. He wants children carded at the candy store…

The talk show host had dared to challenge him and he immediately lost it. So I googled him… he has put out papers, op ed pieces (which this was in Nature magazine) vids of his lectures and so on and if challenged he yells.

One report also said in the past he has been seen in candy shops and when challenged, says he is buying sugar as he was trying to stop smoking. I am guessing he might b a gun nut too. But would want guns banned for the rest of the world.

he quite frankly says sugar is the most toxic substance on earth.

Really?

The country is fucking nuts. Esp apparently out at UCSF in the pediatric endocrinology dept, he is head… and he runs the obesity center. Can you imagine him lording it over patients?

Wow, indeed! Thanks for that info., and I have made a note to keep my kids far far far away from any SF teaching hospitals! Yikes!

I wonder how the folks in Fukishima might answer his contention that sugar is the most toxic substance on earth?!

It’s strange how some people see their battles with addictions to substances, habits, etc. as perogative to lord judgement over others….this past month of wraslin’ with my addiction to nicotine has made me even LESS judgmental, not more….we all have our vices whatever they are…and even if a vice-free human existed, it wouldn’t give them leave to pass judgement on others…

Well I am really opposed to banning commodities… from heroin to sugar.

Oh yes poor Fukushima, I am sure they are totally worried about sugar – anad nothing else…… and they are trying to keep very quiet about our “small” leak out here at San Onofre…. but one report yesterday said that interior linings in some integral part are very worn out, a lot more than they should be. Hardly sounds good.

You need photo ID to buy knives from grocery stores now? Doesn’t make the story any better for me. If I understood the comment in The Grocer correctly, you can’t buy knives at Sainsbury’s unless you’re over 18. I started cooking dinner when I was 13. I’d love to know what my mum would have said if I’d told her I’d broken a paring knife and wasn’t allowed to buy a new one.

… and they are trying to keep very quiet about our “small” leak out here at San Onofre….

and the January 31st tritium leak …(yet another), a few days ago (no need to worry everythings under control of the NRC!!!!) at the Byron Nuclear Generating Station, in Illinois; …yeah, ….you guessed it, . Exelon. …

I’m always amazed at how many of the most judgmental fucks on women’s weight are supposedly “on my side.” That is, Left of Liberal or whatever. One of them sneered at me when I “outed myself” as fat, though prior to that we’d had some interesting discussions. Apparently one’s humanity is revoked by the presence of a spare tire around the middle.

I won’t read the fuckstick’s blog anymore. And I hope he crashes his car/bike into a tree one day and I live long enough to do my Big-Ass shuffle on his grave. >:

The Happy Meal. God. Oh to be free of that tyranny.
Not that I begrudge it. I would note tho, that its only a happy Meal till the youngsters starts farting out methane like the larger barnyard animals. A clear llink to the nuclear industry too, the “collectible” diminutive figurine crap seemingly with the million-year-half-life of fissile materials that just seems to proliferate within the breeding containment vessel otherwise known as “home”.. That for many will doom any actual evacuation plan while trying to get out the door in the event of a power plant meltdown.

Come to think of it, fuck those Happy Meals.
They’re not all that happy. A fucking living Hell, frankly. :lol:

Peer Pressure. That’s what I blame it on. LOL
But see, I come at it from a different angle, I mean,
Winning The War on The Happy Meal and all.

I’m all like fuck the nutritional value considerations for the children, mine or anyone else’s, LOL, Yt’s the painful, crippling, podiatric injuries inflicted upon barefoot ADULTS when steeping on those MOTHERFUH-!!#&$!*!FUckaSHiFUCK!! booby-tube things that come with the crap-in-a-bag.
I don’t give a God Damn what it does to the kids, afterall, there are advanced treatment options available for them. I just wish there was a inviting label with instructions showing the microcephalous freeloaders of the planet how to devour the hideous trinkets whole.

Just a little peace and quiet.
That’s all I asked. And when that didn’t work,
I just started them right in on the reefer. :lol: Hell, most of them can smoke without any ill affects to adults anyways. :lol::wink:

BUT I completely admit I have never had a SUV full of wiggling children in need of a fast meal. The problem is so much lack of choice. It APPEARS, from time to time, that we have choices. But it’s few and far between.

I can remember when “obese” meant the dude who made the Guinness Book for needing an extra-large coffin when he died. Now it’s any (woman) who can’t zip herself into a size 00 and still dares to go out in public without a fucking burqa on.

Some local ex-fat creep just wrote a shitty book about how he got rid of all his “disgusting” fat and how anyone who doesn’t imitate him post-haste is a horrible burden on society and blah blah blah. This self-righteous fuck is also a restaurant critic. I wonder what he does if he gets to the restaurant and there’s already some “disgusting, burdensome” fat person daring to enjoy their pie and ice cream in his saintly line of vision? Does he throw a tantrum until the maitre d has the offending fat person expelled?

Yup, apparently tasers are the ‘cure’ for any display of the slightest rudeness by the unlawyered, unmoneyed, or Lone Wolf!!!!!!™ masses (of course if that off the hook punishment was applied all across the board, to politicians and vampire squid vips: cutting in line! in front of, and to the hinderance of, others…ohhh nevermind, it will never happen across the board, generally it will only happen to those who don’t have the power/$$$$$$ to defend themselves.)

A Montara man walking two lapdogs off leash was hit with an electric-shock gun by a National Park Service ranger after allegedly giving a false name [why would she ask for his name over a month old law leash law that many likely weren’t even aware of, and duh, why would anyone now not want their name on the horrendous” Homeland Terrerist” database for walking their dogs without a leash in an area where it was allowed for years until a month prior? – diane] and trying to walk away, authorities said Monday.

Per unrelated witnesses:

“It was really scary,” said Michelle Babcock, who said she had seen the incident as she and her husband were walking their two border collies. “I just felt so bad for him.”

Babcock said Hesterberg had repeatedly asked the ranger why he was being detained. She didn’t answer him, Babcock said.

“He just tried to walk away. She never gave him a reason,” Babcock said.

The ranger shot Hesterberg in the back with her shock weapon as he walked off, Babcock said.

“We were like in disbelief,” she said. “It didn’t make any sense.”

Likely, the man hadn’t even realized the leash law had been changed a month prior ( and likely Ms. Taser Ranger had already run into a number of people who had no clue. But even if he did have a clue, the Taser use was the real crime going on, and she should not only be fired, but be charged for that crime.

Rancho Corral de Tierra has long been an off-leash walking spot for local dog owners. In December, the area became part of the national park system, which requires that all dogs be on a leash, ….

I read in one report that there is an earlier complaint against her from a dog owner… no details.

Reports keep pushing that he “knowingly gave false information” which I think, but it is hard to tell from the purposeful mishmash that most reports have been, they mean when she asked him his name and he replied

John Freaking Smith. (I forget hsi actual name at the moment)

Aside from the tasing, she tased him in the back, after he said if she was not citing him then he was leaving.

So interesting that so much hay is being made of his giving her a false name, versus why she needed a dossier/dna on him in the first place (one report claimed she just wanted to “educate him” on the new law), when clearly he was only walking his dogs. Again, who now wants their name on one of this countries sadistic dat bases of “enemies,” especially when it can ruin their lives despite their innocent intents.

well that is the thing, if it is as some reports have said, it is a stretch to say he “gave a false name”. Some early reports tried to shield it and say he “offered false ID”, which of course would lead people to think he had fake Cal ID or Drivers License.

Saying I am Robert FREAKING Hesterberg is NOT offering “false ID”.

Fortunately there were witnesses…

Also if the leash law is new it should be nothing more than a verbal ADVISORY. Nothing else. There is some talk that there is little notice on the trail tat leashes are required… and now, knowing how new the law is, I bet that is correct.

So somebody direct Susan and Hillary to the Imperial dumpster for their Happy Meals.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said she was “disgusted” by the vetoes that “prop up desperate dictators,” and French Ambassador Gerard Araud said “history will judge harshly” those who protected the Assad regime.

“To block this resolution is to bear the responsibility for the horrors on the ground in Syria,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Munich today after meeting with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.

Frankly, this looks like a job for Biden ..{Cackle, snicker, chortle-chortle….}:wink:
Hell, he was great with that goodwill-tour-turned-away-game arena-riot in China last summer. :lol:

Stacy Taylor hosted what I considered a pretty good defense of Occupy Oakland on KGO with a young spokesman for Occupy Oakland.

So shocking (snerk) to hear that the flag burning (who, in their right mind, doesn’t feel like burning it at this point?) happened after all of the illegal detentions (kettleing versus an allowance of peaceful disbursement) and police abuse?

hmmm at Cpunch there is a posting that is critical of Oakland Occ, but in interesting ways…

The author suggests this for a future bldg take over.

[H]ow could this be done better next time? First, identify ten trusted occupiers to pick a building to occupy. Have each of those ten occupiers pick nine trusted friends to total one hundred. In secret, devise a plan to converge on a defensible building that presents the police challenges to retake. Leak other buildings scattered around town as decoys for occupation. Work with the blacque bloque to create a militant diversion a good distance away from the target building. Call a public march where the blacque bloque agrees to avoid towards another of the decoy buildings but closer to the target structure. Have the one hundred trusted folks converge on and take the target building while the blacque bloque is going at the cops across town. Once the building is secure, tweet out the location to the peaceful march to consolidate and defend the occupation.

This is one instance of how to use a diversity of tactics to cooperate to achieve goals. .. . . . . .

Gingrich, just now on MeatPress: “Obama has declared WAR on the Catholic Church”

And on the 3 Nice Jews and Matthews Show, , Beschloss, Mrs Greenspan and Howard Fineman, all very entertaining, something about Obby getting boxed in on supporting Israel in an independent attack Iran at the end of the shtick..

I thought I would try to catch a bit of the Sunday Soaps today… a lot seems to b happening. Might be hilarious to hear the take.

Don’t know if you saw it but there was a piece at Bus Inider on how the mil is limiting free speech of their Catlick chaplains. You know, censorship!!!!! That letter that was read in churches last Sunday, about the conscience clause and birth control coverage etc, had to undergo a bit of a change in the mil. The line about illegal laws or soemthing similar. Seen as too defiant to the Head Hefe, Pretzel.

Honestly I am hardly pro military but my feeling is Buck the Fuck Up. You’re in the MILITARY fffs.

If i can land on it without too much difficulty (connectivity problems) will post it.

Hell, I’d be happy with an entirely Catholic Chaplain Military.
Followed by immediate deployment for ground war on Iran..
I could… I could, I could support that.

All we’d have to do I think, I mean from a mission critical POV, is train newly recruited special-op-seminarians to tone down the sequins and not be constantly eyeballin’ young boy cock when put behind enemy lines.

MORGAN: Here’s the dilemma, and it’s one I put to Rick Santorum very recently. I was surprised by his answer, although I sort of understood from his belief point of view that he would come up with this.

But it’s a dilemma that I am going to put to you. You have two daughters. You have many granddaughters. If one of them was raped — and I accept it’s a very unlikely thing to happen. But if they were, would you honestly look at them in the eye and say they had to have that child if they were impregnated?

PAUL: No. If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room. I would give them a shot of estrogen or give them —

MORGAN: You would allow them to abort the baby?

PAUL: It is absolutely in limbo, because an hour after intercourse or a day afterwards, there is no legal or medical problem. If you talk about somebody coming in and they say, well, I was raped and I’m seven months pregnant and I don’t want to have anything to do with it, it’s a little bit different story.

But somebody arriving in an emergency room saying, I have just been raped and there is no chemical — there’s no medical and there’s no legal evidence of a pregnancy —

MORGAN: Life doesn’t begin at conception?

PAUL: Life does begin at conception.

MORGAN: Then you would be taking a life.

PAUL: Well, you don’t know if you’re taking a life either, because this is an area that is — but to decide everything about abortion and respect for life on this one very, very theoretical condition, where there may have been a life or not a life.

MORGAN: But here’s the thing: although it is a hypothetical, it does happen. People do get raped and they do get impregnated. And sometimes they are so ashamed by what’s happened that weeks go by before they may even discover they are pregnant.

They have to face this dilemma. And they are going to have a president who has a very, very strong view about this.

PAUL: This is like the proposal that the people who like abortion, endorse abortion because it’s the woman’s right to her body. You say, well, does that mean one minute before birth, you can kill the baby? I did this on one of the TV programs where some women were opposed to what I was saying.

I said, this nine-pound baby is in the woman. She has the right. She argues her case. I said you would abort this baby because the woman has had unfortunate some circumstances, so the doctor gets paid a handsome fee to kill this nine-pound baby?

Oh, that’s not what we’re talking about. But that is what they are talking about. They are talking about a human life. So a person immediately after rape, yes. It’s a tough one. I won’t satisfy everybody there.

But to tell you the truth, what I saw happening in the 1960s and the change in the law and — no, the change in attitude, people were doing illegal abortions. To me it is a moral problem. It was to change the morality of the ’60s, the lack of respect for life, leads to the lack of respect for liberty and all the things that I believe in.

So it was a change in morality that had the Supreme Court change the law. So I don’t believe the change in the law is the magic cure. I do believe, though, very sincerely, if we don’t have an understanding of life and have a lot of respect for life, I can’t defend people on their personal liberties. I can’t be as tolerant as I am on how they use liberties.

So that’s why I think it’s really a moral issue, rather than a legal solution to all these problems. As a physician, as a gynecologist, I have had to face some of these very, very difficult problems. I understand them. Even before Roe versus Wade, many of those problems that existed, where there is no perfect answer, they were taken care of, but it was always done — they respected the fact that they were dealing with a life.

MORGAN: Finally on this point, do you accept there is a slight contradiction between a candidate who is pro liberty, pro personal choice, pro personal responsibility in almost every other area, but on the specific area says no, you don’t have choice?

PAUL: See, I don’t see the inconsistency because I see the nine- pound baby that’s still within the mother as deserving some protection, too. Who deserves protection? That fetus has rights, because if I do harm to him, I get sued. If you have a car accident and kill a fetus, there are legal right there. But to say that it’s only the mother, it’s very, very unique.

If you carry your argument to the — all the way through, we have a right to our homes. Shouldn’t we have the privacy of our homes? Do we have a right to kill the baby one minute after birth? No. Everybody say — as a matter of fact, this is what happens: we can kill the baby before it’s born and a doctor is paid. One minute after birth, if the woman who was unfortunate enough to have this baby — if she throws the baby away, she gets arrested for a homicide.

To me, the one minute before birth and one minute after birth isn’t a whole lot different.

MORGAN: You understand that to a lot of people with serious religious conviction, it is. They say life begins at conception.

I wish someone would just let him go off on abortion. And women. Because he can reach foaming at the mouth, stammering and screeching. EVERYBODY pulls him back. (They prob have him on some sort of rage suppression drug, that he passed up the chance iwth Morgan).

Before the police dragged them off, the members of Pussy Riot, the Russian day-glo balaclava-clad punk rock protesters, sang their anthem “Revolt in Russia” (“Revolt in Russia – the charisma of protest / Revolt in Russia, Putin’s got scared!”) near the Kremlin. Their inspiration for a style of resistance never before seen in Russia, was the riot grrrl punk movement, including groups like Kathleen Hanna’s Bikini Kill, and flash mobs. The young women of the collective, average age 25, have revealed only the smallest details about their lives. None will divulge their day jobs. They only use first-names.

In the two weeks since their mid-January action, the all-female group has become a potent symbol of anger at the status quo in Russian society and their videos have gone viral all over the world. Like many young people in Russia, the members of the Pussy Riot collective are furious at Vladamir Putin’s plans to seek the presidency again and his return was the impetus behind the formation of the group (as well as their song “Putin Has Pissed Himself”).

In case you had any doubts about what the mortgage settlement was really about and why banks that were so keenly opposed to it are now willing to go ahead, the news of the last two days should settle any doubts.

As we had indicated earlier, one of the many leaks about the settlement showed that there had been a major shift its parameters. Of the $25 billion that has been bandied about as a settlement total for the biggest banks, comparatively little (less than $5 billion) is in cash. The rest comes in the form of credits for principal modifications of mortgages.

Originally, that was to come only from mortgages held by banks, meaning they would bear the costs. The fact that this meant that whether a homeowner might benefit would be random (were you one of the lucky ones whose mortgage had not been securitized?) was apparently used as an excuse to morph the deal into a huge win for them: allowing the banks to get credit for modifying mortgages that they don’t own.

The first rule of finance (well, maybe second, “fees are not negotiable” might be number one) is always use other people’s money before your own. So giving the banks permission to modify loans they don’t own guarantees that that is where the overwhelming majority of mortgage modifications will take place, ex those the banks would have done anyhow on their own loans. And the design of the program, that securitized loans will be given only half the credit towards the total, versus 100% for loans the banks own, merely assures that even more damage will be done to investors to pay for the servicers’ misdeeds.

Let me stress: this is a huge bailout for the banks. The settlement amounts to a transfer from retirement accounts (pension funds, 401 (k)s) and insurers to the banks. And without this subsidy, the biggest banks would be in serious trouble

Why? As leading mortgage analyst Laurie Goodman pointed out in a late 2010 presentation, just over half of the private label (non Fannie/Freddie) securitizations have second liens behind them (overwhelmingly home equity lines of credit). Moreover, homes with first liens only have far lower delinquency rates than homes with both first and second liens. Separately, various studies have found that defaults are also correlated with how far underwater a borrower is. If a borrower is too far in negative equity territory, it makes less sense for them to struggle to stay current, no matter how much they love their home.

How does the Schneiderman MERS suit play into this? The consensus reaction to his Friday filing of a suit on MERS abuses seemed to be that he had at a minimum redeemed himself for taking the wind out of the dissenting AG effort by joining a Federal task force that looks likely to produce little and becoming coy on where he stood on the settlement deal. After Friday’s filing, some even thought he had outplayed Obama, by getting him to commit in a very public way to investigations and then filing a suit that put robosigning and other foreclosure abuses front and center. It looked as if he had gotten to have his cake and eat it too.

I’m skeptical of this cheery view. As readers know, I doubt that this investigation will produce much except some suits against small or at best medium fry. As Charles Ferguson of Inside Job put it, “Let Them Eat Task Forces.” There is a well established art form to stymieing people like Schneiderman: do the least important 60% of what they asked you to do, slowly.

Schneiderman got to be on a not-likely-to-do-much task force. What did he get? He allegedly gets more resources, and he might get more information, but the Administration scored a huge win by dragging out the settlement talks over a year and running out the statute of limitations on some of the best legal theories. I have to admit I was snookered. I thought the ongoing joke of the Tom Miller “we’re gonna have a deal any day now” was an embarrassing bug, but it was a feature. The AGs were being strung along as long as possible to keep them from filing suits. A few like Beau Biden, Martha Coakley, and Catherine Cortez Masto still did, but not soon enough or in enough numbers to embarrass some of the other fence-sitters into action (Lisa Madigan is an exception that proves the rule).

So what does his MERS suit mean? I’m mainly focusing on how it relates to the bigger game of the settlement, but let me make a few observations about his filing qua filing. It is gratifying to see a long form description of the MERS horrorshow. And this suit could be used to shift focus back to an issue that everyone in the mortgage industrial complex seems to want to push aside: servicers seem unable to foreclose legally and chain of title is a mess. Settlement deals and compensation to abused homeowners could be useful, but they don’t address the underlying mess (and neither do phony baloney OCC consent decrees).

And the media keeps taking the industry line on foreclosure problems. It keeps touting how long it takes to foreclose in New York as if this is the fault of the borrowers and the courts. In fact, it is the fault of the industry. In October 2010, New York implemented a requirement that all attorneys in residential foreclosures certify that they take “reasonable” measures to verify the accuracy of documents submitted to the court. From a formal standpoint, all this did was reaffirm existing law, but procedurally, it makes it much easier for borrower’s counsel to get attorneys who play fast and loose sanctioned.

But does the Schneiderman MERS suit hinder or help the settlement effort? Perversely, it may help the Administration push it over the line. If the leak about the scope of the release via Mike Lux is to be believed, MERS-related liability is excluded from the waiver. Schneiderman has just demonstrated you can file what amounts to a robosigning lawsuit using the MERS exclusion. You won’t get the securitizations outside of MERS where the notes weren’t transferred properly, but you’ll get a large proportion of the defective securitizations.

Now why should the banks sign onto a deal to settle robosigning claims that leaves them exposed in a big way to robosiging claims? If they thought the Schneiderman suit revealed a problem in the release, you’d expect them to demand that the negotiations be reopened. It may be too soon to tell, but I’ve seen no sign of bank pushback, and this deal has been so heavily lawyered I am sure the banks were well aware of this issue. Similarly, as reader Pwelder pointed out, all the banks that were targeted in the suit were up on Friday markedly more than the market overall, indicating that investors do not see this suit as threatening.

So the fact that they seem so keen to go ahead on a deal that does not very much to shield them from attorney general suits on robosigning confirms our suspicions: the banks are willing to pay several billion of hard cash among themselves to create the impression that they are Doing Something for Homeowners as cover for a bailout. Nicely played all around.

And Donovon’s cheerleading confirms the Administration’s sense of priorities. He regards robo-signing, foreclosure fraud, and making a mess of title as unimportant, and applauds the this settlement as a way to get principal reductions and allow the banks to escape any meaningful liability or responsibility.

The Obama Administration may have decided that investors have acted enough like patsies, given how they have failed to react to rampant servicer abuses, that they judge the risk of investor litigation and a related PR embarrassment to be small. But this battle is not yet over. The rumblings I am hearing from investor-land remind of the sections of the Lord of the Rings when the Ents were finally roused. It isn’t yet clear that investors will act, but if they do, the Administration will be unprepared for the vehemence of their response.

So.

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Following its election in January on a pledge to confront the austerity program that's decimated Greece's economy, the Syriza government has faced a major pushback from international creditors led by Germany. Days after Greece secured a four-month extension to a loan package in exchange for new conditions on its spending, Noam Chomsky says the Euro […]

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The Islamic State might be the best-funded radical Islamist group, perhaps in history, but the coalition air campaign that’s targeting its oil-refining operations and military assets has begun to damage…Click to Continue »

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As Republican lawmakers criticized Hillary Clinton Tuesday for using her personal email account to conduct government business at the State Department, the White House would not say whether the former…Click to Continue »

At the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, speakers advanced Iran as an existential threat and sought to downplay differences between Israel and the US while demonstrators were arrested outside

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday the Senate would begin debate next week on a bill that would require President Barack Obama to submit any final nuclear deal with Iran for Congress' approval.

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Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.